We are removing walls to turn 4 tiny rooms into one large room with a center column that will have electrical. The resulting room will have a main entrance from the front, a patio door, a stairway, and two doors to adjoining rooms. There will probably be 4 lighting 'zones' in the room. According to the NEC, does each doorway require a 3-way switch, and if so, can it be just for the zone that it enters into, or will I need a bank of them for all 4 zones at each point of entry?
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Based on the answers to your related question it seems reasonable to say that "at every entrance to the room there must be a switch which controls a light." Or, said another way, "one or more switches which control one or more lights."
It's not required by code to be able to control all possible lights from all possible entrances -- one just needs to be able to turn on enough light to navigate the room and safely reach additional switches wherever they may be. There could be a dedicated light and switch corresponding to each entrance.
That leads to a lot of walking around the space to switch all the lights; 3-way switching provides convenience. In your case, full-matrix 3-way switching of every light zone from every entrance would lead to large banks of switches and a whole lot of wiring.
You can choose which light zones you want to control from each entrance; the rule is just that you have to be able to control something from every entrance.
Greg Hill
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